Posts Tagged: Spending
The Bubble
12

How Long Does Tumblr's $85 Million Last?

| September 26th, 2011

$85 million sounds like a lot of money! That's what Tumblr just raised, on top of the $30 million they raised ten months ago, bringing their investment dollars to a bit north of $120 million. There's a staff of 50 (now only 82% male!), so that's like $5 million a year right there. (Also, they've outsourced tech support (rather poorly; if you ask Tumblr for help with something, you get some dude copying and pasting a manual at you) with some minimal supervision, and that's probably a significant, if user-annoying, cost savings.) But staff costs are surely dwarfed by the cost of doing at the very [...]

5

The End of the 00s: The Debt Regret Matrix, by Jessanne Collins

| December 31st, 2009

There's something sort of patriotic about the fact that I'll be memorializing the aughts well into this brave new year with a sizable debt to Bank of America. Like our great nation, I spent the last ten years getting stung and overcompensating, acting indecisive and entitled, living way beyond my means. And now I am paying. With interest! My credit card statements are so textbook "Don't" they deserve a reality show: a trip to Japan for the wedding of a couple I'd never met; $500 worth of phone calls from what was supposed to be a budget trip to the Dominican Republic; shitty new Ikea furniture to replace shitty broken [...]

Handy Guides
36

My Ten-Point Action Plan for Spending One Million Dollars at Tiffany

| July 6th, 2011

Perpetual presidential candidate Newt Gingrich made news last month when it was revealed he and his wife Callista carried a credit line of up to $500,000 at Tiffany, a jewelry store catering to the powerful and virtuous. He made news again last week when it was revealed he had a second line of credit—this one up to $1,000,000. (New Gingrich’s top fundraising staff has since quit.)

Friends, you shouldn’t be surprised by the Gingriches’ million-dollar credit line at Tiffany. After all, people spend a million dollars at Tiffany every day—regular people just like you! How do they do it? By following my Ten-Point Action Plan [...]

Rich People Things
13

Frugality Is So Fatiguing

| January 25th, 2010

The Obama administration-now in frantic populist make-up mode-may be pondering beefed-up regulation of the banking industry, but the titans of Wall Street finance are plainly in no mood to be fenced in. Not only did investors pull a major funk last week, putatively thanks to their skittishness over the White House's antibanking posturing, but Manhattan's monied class is primed to get frisky once more in the luxe consumer marketplace, according to New York Times Sunday Styles correspondent Laura M. Holson. It's bonus season, and for all the high dudgeon finance moguls affect to feel over their D.C. victimhood, their generous federal bailouts have put them back decisively [...]